Tag: Word of the Year

One of two things I’ve been striving for this year is being mindful of the time I have available to do important chores such as folding laundry instead of spending time on Pinterest or Facebook. Which is why I uninstalled Facebook and Messenger from my phone last week. I realized I spent so much time on there just reading random feeds when I could have finished one item on my to do list before work.

The other thing I have been trying to do is be more a part of my community whether online or in real life.

My word for the year is community.

Since leaving the military community, it has been hard on both of us to find a place where we belong since we didn’t grow up together with friends or know others through one playgroup or another. We aren’t really seen as a civilian family or a military family since (shockingly) my husband was medically retired at a young age…

Cue the “I’m so sorry to hear that”, “How did he get hurt?” questions.

Our local base is not very friendly toward young retirees or the fact that they may have babies after the military instead of during service ; we had a very bad experience in this area while I was pregnant. So now we just avoid it because it is a pain from what other medically retired (young and older) families have told us as well.

So we are striving to “grow where we are planted” as I learned in PWOC so many years ago. We have plugged into our local church with an enrichment class, neighborhood ministry as our schedule allows, and small group every week or so. And we have gotten involved with our neighborhood and meet a few of our neighbors too.

Trying to find community is hard though when you aren’t the typical “normal” family but we are getting to know our tribe around us this year, for sure.